The expertise of FSSS and Hal Watts in the field of cave diver training during the 1970’s was well recognized. Hal and his staff at FSSS were chosen to be the sole trainers of cave divers for NASDS (National Association of Skin Diving Schools). Below are copies of an exchange of letters between Bill Gates, Editor of Phreatic Diver, and John Gaffney, Executive Director of NASDS, showing Hal’s critical role in training Cave Divers for NASDS.

In 1988 PSA, in the FDS & FSSS tradition, continued training Cave Divers and issuing Cave Diver certifications. Now that PSA has evolved into a much larger international certification agency, the PSAI Cave Diving Program has continued to expand into the many corners of the globe. It is with this manual that PSAI carries its legacy of quality cave diver training into the 21st Century. Hal has always kept contacts with his associates in the cave diving community.

PSAI Executive Chairman Gary Taylor has also been very involved with helping several Deep Diving Record holders. With his start in extended range deep air diving in the early 1970’s, by 1990 he had successfully logged many deep air dives below 300 fsw (91 msw).

Gary provided much of the initial training in extended range diving for Dan Manion, including Dan’s Deep Air and Trimix training. Dan also had training with and gained experience by participating in many of the projects of The United States Deep Diving Team, which was founded and led by Gary Taylor. Gary still has one of the two dive computers that Dan carried with him on his World Record Deep Air Dive. It was Gary who wrote the original Deep Air Manual for IANTD.

Sheck Exley and Gary often compared notes and consulted with each other. Gary came up with the suggestion of a controlled active electric underwater heater for divers engaged in deep dives with long decompression. Gary’s friend Mark Owens took the idea from concept to manufactured prototype. Gary and Mark tested the prototype. Sheck had mentioned his concern for keeping warm on his extremely long decompression dives. This heater was first used by Sheck on his Trimix – Altitude record dive on August 1993 in Bushmansgat (Bushman’s Hole) in South Africa. Sheck reported it was a, “God-send in helping me to stay warm and sane during the horrendous decompression demanded by my dive profile!” Gary considered it “return favor ” for Sheck giving him the idea for a very unique lighting system used when Gary shot the very first underwater cave video. Gary, being the chronic archiver, still has the original prototype of the heater used by Sheck.

In 1970, Hal wrote and copyrighted the first manual for Extended Range Deep Diving for instructors and conducted specialty courses and certification for those interested. One of the projects that Hal wanted was a film. He commissioned Ned DeLoach of New World Publications to produce a 16mm color film “Deep Diving” on location at Wakulla Springs, Florida.

Hal Watts formed a specialty diving club known as the “Forty Fathom Scubapros” that was very active diving all over Florida especially at a sink hole that just happened to be 40 fathoms (73 meters, 240 feet) deep! Many of the other divers and organizations simply were not prepared to understand the desire of these early pioneers, so the Scubapros continued largely in quiet. During the 1970s they continued refining techniques and skills to improve in deep diving activities.

GARY TAYLOR’S HISTORY WITH DIVING and PSAI

Gary Taylor

As history often does, fate brought Hal Watts and Gary Taylor together.

Gary started diving in 1969. From the very first dive he was hooked on SCUBA. Gary has always been very inquisitive and this led to him gaining as much experience, knowledge, and satisfying his curiosity in the underwater world by becoming a true explorer and innovator. Gary can still remember teaching SCUBA during the early 1970’s using one of his favorite class guides: the yellow and black book published by U.S. Divers titled Sample Lesson Plan for Basic Skin and Scuba Diving, by Tommy Thompson with Introduction and endorsement by Jacques Cousteau. Gary still has two cherished copies of this publication.

It was during the 70’s that Gary met Wes Skiles. Wes only lived a few blocks from Gary’s house and they often spent time together comparing notes on the caves they were either exploring separately or together. During these explorations the two often found themselves diving well below the “sacred 130’ (40m) depth mark.”

In the late 1970’s, Gary purchased one of the first models of the Radio Shack TRS-80 computer. All things revolving around SCUBA, using BASIC programing language, Gary stayed up 48 hours straight, right after his purchase of the computer, writing a computer program which would calculate all the important information a diver would need for single and repetitive dives based on the U.S. Navy Air Decompression Tables. All you would need to do was input your Depth, Bottom Time, and Surface Intervals. A bit ahead of its time considering how very few people owned computers in the 1970’s. Gary also started using this computer to log dive information, write dive specialty outlines, dive exams, etc.

During the early 1980’s John Gaffney founder of NASDS became aware of the manuals Gary had written to teach students. John “ambushed” Gary at a dinner meeting and started him on a journey of authoring dive manuals for international use by certification agencies. Since then, Gary has become one of the most prolific authors of dive manuals in the world. To date, Gary has authored over 50 different published titles of dive manuals for three major agencies: NASDS, IANTD and PSAI. He has also written numerous of articles for dive magazines and publications.

A much younger Gary Taylor (yellow arrow) in the early 1980’s with a group of NASDS Instructors in San Diego, California.

In the early 1980’s Gary founded The United State Deep Dive Team. During the 1980’s, The United States Deep Diving Team was engaged in exploration projects which involved extended depth ranges, long bottom times and decompression at dive sites located at altitudes of 1500 meters (5,000 feet) and higher. In the early 1980’s the US Deep Diving Team integrated the multi-level diving methodology presented by Dennis Graver at the IQ 8 conference in 1976 and the Cross Corrections to extend bottom times when exploring altitude sites. The nature of the altitude work of the team’s projects became more demanding by the mid 1980’s, therefore the team chose to use nitrox for a safety factor during decompression. Modified Cross Corrections were used at first. When the Buhlmann ZH-L16 Altitude Tables were published, they were used with safety modifications for nitrox. Later, more creative and direct uses for nitrox and altitude were devised.  Later modifications were made upon the full publication of the ZH-L16 algorithm in Tauch Medizin. In early 1988, Gary Taylor came up with the Nitrox to Air at Sea-level Altitude Equivalency Methodology for use by the U.S. Deep Diving Team in their projects. In late 1988, Gary devised the Theoretical Ocean Air Depth (TOAD) Methodology for the team’s altitude projects. Publication of these methodologies didn’t take place until April 1996, when Gary authored the IANTD Altitude Diving Manual. In the spring and summer issues of Immersed Magazine Gary wrote a two part article through which most of the world was introduced to these methodologies he had devised.

One of the very first publically available table generating software programs, which allowed the use of nitrogen, oxygen and helium mixtures, was Dive Profile Analysis (DPA). Gary was good friends with the creator of this software, Corey Berggren, having known him many years from their association in the cave diving community. Corey based Bulhmann ZH-L16 algorithm. After discussing the use of the software with both Corey and several phone calls with Dr. Buhlmann, Gary had an understanding of how best to use this program to produce Trimix Dive Tables for more extreme depth altitude diving projects the U.S. Deep Diving Team was ready to take on. The team became the first to use Dive Profile Analysis (DPA), within a few weeks of it’s 1992 release modified fashion, based on Corey’s and Bulhmann’s input, to generate tables for the use of Trimix at altitude and actually dive them.

From Gary’s personal conversations with Bühlmann, (relating to the use of the ZH-L16 algorithm for the development of tables for industrial hyperbaric operations, as well as special tables for the 1994 World Record deep air dive of Dr. Dan Manion), it is easy to say that he was a researcher who paid very close attention to all the details. Gary headed the development of the first Bühlmann recreational dive tables to be used by a major U.S. certification agency, NASDS.

The Theoretical Ocean Air Depth (TOAD) Method, another innovation conceived by PSAI Executive Chairman – Gary Taylor, for using nitrox for diving sites at altitudes above sea-level.

In gathering information on deep air diving to train and improve upon what the United States Deep Diving Team needed for safely conducting their exploration and dive projects, Gary became well aware of Hal Watts (even before the founding of the team). Gary had been warned by the “powers that be” to not tell anyone how deep he was diving and to stay away from Hal Watts. Maybe when you are more forward thinking than those believing in the sacredness of the 130’ (40m) depth limit, you become a heretic. Gary remembers at the time thinking, “One day Hal and I will cross paths and I bet we will be the best of friends.” That actually happened in the late 1980’s. By then Gary had already started diving at 40 Fathom Grotto and soon Hal and he were hitting it off very well.